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The Chaos of Stars, by Kiersten White

What I’d pay: $8

To sum it up: The human daughter of Egyptian gods, Isis and Osiris, tries to get away from her traditional family for the summer.

This book was predictable, but surprisingly good.

The main character is a self-sufficient girl who has some very complicated family issues: her parents are immortal gods but chose to make her mortal with no powers. Understandably, she has a lot of resentment and trust issues stemming from this, and doesn’t like to get too close to people. She decides to escape her family by heading to visit her brother in California for the summer. There she makes friends, does some soul searching, gets a boyfriend (incidentally also a child of gods, what are the chances?), and eventually everything works itself out. Don’t worry, I didn’t bother with a spoiler alert because you know all of this is going to happen about two chapters into reading because the biggest fault of the book is its predictability. But, despite that, it was sweet, well-written, and had a bit of suspense and mystery which make it a good, light-hearted read.

Bottomline: This book is definitely aimed at younger teen or pre-teen readers, but I still enjoyed it. The way it deals with emotional family issues keeps it from entering the realm of total fluff. It’s relatively short, with a little romance, mystery, good characters, and a happy resolution. Plus, if you’re a mythology buff there are some great Egyptian mythology tidbits at the beginning of each chapter. I got this from the LA library after a short wait.